Deborah Roberts features in 'Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage'
Deborah Roberts features in Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage, the first major museum exhibition dedicated to contemporary collage reflecting the breadth and complexity of Black identity and experiences in the United States. The show, spread across three floors in two buildings, brings together nearly 60 works by an intergenerational group of 49 African American artists to explore diverse Black-constructed narratives through collage and collage-informed works.
Multiplicity examines how themes of personal and collective history, regional and national heritage, gender and sexual orientation, and racial constructs are expressed in collage. By assembling pieces of paper, photographs, fabric, and other salvaged or repurposed materials, artists create unified compositions that offer poignant expressions of human experience, including fragmentation and reconstruction, shared history and memory, cultural hybridity, gender fluidity, and notions of beauty.
Featured artists range from established luminaries to emerging and mid-career figures, including Deborah Roberts, Mark Bradford, Lauren Halsey, Rashid Johnson, Kerry James Marshall, Wangechi Mutu, Jamea Richmond-Edwards, Tschabalala Self, Lorna Simpson, Devan Shimoyama, Mickalene Thomas, and Kara Walker.
Deborah Roberts in conversation with The Phillips Collection Senior Consulting Curator Dr. Adrienne Childs will be held on July 18, 6:30–8:30pm. A book signing of Deborah Roberts: Twenty Years of Artwork with the artist follows.
The touring exhibition was previosuly on view at Frist Art Museum, Nashville, Tennessee.
